When police detective Kyle Morgan finds his best friend and long-time neighbor Cecelia at his front door, he’s overjoyed.   In two seconds, that joy turns to heartbreak as Ceci informs him she’s pregnant and her boyfriend has abandoned her.  Kyle has loved Ceci since the first time he saw her, when he was ten and she was seven; they’ve been best friends for twenty years and he makes a decision then and there not only to stand by the woman he’s silently loved from childhood but to allow her to claim he is the father of her baby.  The matter is taken out of their hands when,  a little later at a family get-together, Kyle’s well-meaning but snoopy siblings asks Ceci point-blank  if their brother is responsible.  Before the two know it, they are being thrown together in ways neither had expected—in spite of the fact that Kyle because he swore he would never tell Ceci how he feels about her and Ceci is she’s afraid any relationship with him will end up as all her others have…in failure.  Ceci has another reason for concern.  She has no memory of her life before age seven.  Raised by her grandmother, she can’t remember her mother and father at all and though she’s asked Kyle again and again to use his position as a police officer to try to track down her parents, he refuses, not because he doesn’t care but because he promised Ceci’s grandmother he’d keep that information secret.

Too soon, the two best friends acknowledge the attraction they have for each other, and where Kyle is both willing and eager to become the man in Ceci’s life and the father to her child, she still hesitates, her fear of losing her best friend by allowing him to become her lover and perhaps her husband overpowering her admitted love for him.  Going to his brother Chase, who used to be a private investigator, she hires him to find ferret out the information Kyle refuses to find.  Too soon, Chase does just that,  and what he’s learned will bring any future they might have crashing around their feet…

MY OPINION:  This has to be the most frustrating book I’ve read lately!  Not that I didn’t enjoy it, because I did, but Ceci’s continuous vacillation  between  wanting to love Kyle and being afraid that loving him will change his status from friend to lover and cause her to lose him nearly drove me up the wall!  Kyle has his reasons for what he does and his love for Ceci made me applaud his behavior…the man was almost a saint to put up with her, as far as I was concerned!  In most of the story, Ceci uses him as a pacifier, crying on his shoulder, crawling into his bed to be held and soothed—without any sex involved—he’s always a phone call away whenever  she needs him, and it appears that’s all she ever wants.  At one point, in fact, she says, “I’m don’t want to be protected,  I just want you here.” She appears not to be able to see anyone’s view but her own,  even when learning how Kyle has floundered in guilt because he won’t tell her what he knows about her former life.   When he responds to her as a man and not as the childhood friend, she bolts like a scared rabbit while at the same time, admitting she’s having the same feelings about him.  This back-and-forth emotional seesaw was almost tiring, but it had the effect of making me want to keep reading, to see just how Kyle was going to respond and if he could eventually to make Josie to realize that sometimes, one just has to have faith and take a chance.

Staking His Claim is a good story and once I got over wanting to grab Ceci by the shoulders and give her a good shake (which Kyle does on more than one occasion), I enjoyed it.  The angst of Ceci’s pregnancy isn’t the focal point here as might be expected, but the problem of a growing love between  two  people who have known each other all their lives.  The characters are realistic and likable, though I found the Morgan siblings just a little too nosy for comfort.  Still, it’s an entertaining romance and one you’ll enjoy.